Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

After a pretty hectic week in NY, I decided I'd take it a bit easy for my last few days.

The folks I was staying with actually headed out of town on the Friday - it was a long weekend with a holiday on the Monday - having hired a car in New Jersey 'cause it's cheaper. I think they headed out to Connecticut.

Leaving me with the awesome responsibility of feeding their fish! Which also meant I had to say goodbye to the lovely Yasmeen, whom I will use as a template for children of my own some day :-)

They'd be getting back from their long weekend about the time I'd be getting on the plane out of the country.

So I started my Friday by taking a walk through Central Park. I started around West 74th Street, near the Dakota Building, famous for it's resident, one John Lennon. And indeed Yoko Ono, who still lives there, but didn't respond to my promptings on Twitter.

Near said building in Central Park is Strawberry Fields, an area of the park dedicated to the memory of John Lennon. There didn't seem to be much to it when I walked past, except a lot of tourists watching a couple buskers(?) doing acoustic versions of Beatles songs.

Wait, I think I've missed something here... Ah yes, that morning I went and did a bit of shopping for bicycle gear at a place near where I was staying. Picked up a nice brass bell and some rain gear. Then I wandered over to Central Park, past Martin Luther King High School, which has a big sculpture out the front dedicated to him.

Where was I? Ah yes, walking through Central Park. I wandered down to one end of the lake they have there, then up a something called The Mall, which is a long straight path through the middle of the park. Tree lined, nice. Gave some money to a rather deft juggler. Saw one squirrel, but was too busy to engage with me.

Then I followed a path up to the south east corner of the park, which ended up dumping me on 5th Avenue, right near the Apple store. I'd promised some friends on Twitter I'd pop into it, so I did, via the amusing round glass elevator. It's in a large basement.

And half of freakin' New York was down there! It was soooooooo packed, I could barely move. The must ship a lot of merchandise from there. I looked at some prices on things, but just couldn't come at what they were asking, still. I took some photos, which look, strangely, like they're of a crowded basement store!

By this time, it was actually getting late in the afternoon - I'd spent a chunk of the middle of the day doing bugger all, which was nice. So I hoped on a train down to Times Square (again). I hate Times Square... Well, hate it too strong a word for it... It's generally full of milling tourists trying to take photos of moving billboards, a flock of folks trying to sell them shit at the same time. And surrounded by overpriced restaurants, mostly chains. But it is also on the way to a lot of places, close to a number of theatres, and has a place where you can get cheap tickets to Broadway shows. Which was why I was there - I wanted to get tickets to a musical. Avenue Q - more on that later.

I did spent a small amount of time in one store on Times Square - the Levi shop. Found a pair of black 501 jeans, which are impossible to find in Australia for some reason.

I dashed madly across town down to Canal Street, looking for a piercing and tattoo supply place I found on the internets. Canal Street is one of the old streets in town, and is a bit mental. It's all fake Rollex and other designer stuff being flogged from tiny booth-like shops. I kept my hand on my wallet there. And of course the piercing supply place was shut - who would have thought on a Friday evening at 7PM! This is New York, what kind of shop shuts that early???

Anyway, then I rushed back to Times Square to find the theatre that Avenue Q was playing in...

More out of sequence posts - sorry.

Monday night, May 18th, I had dinner with a woman called Linda. Who is my brother-in-law's mother (got that? Her son is married to my sister!), and is now the only native New Yorker that I know! Well, aside from Zach my sisters husband of course. But he lives in Cambodia and Linda lives on Long Island.

I was instructed to have dinner with Linda by my mother, who has never met her, although the communicate via email and what have you. And hey, I'm in a strange city, it's always nice to meet someone who vaguely knows of you :-)

And Linda is lovely! She has one of those classic Jewish New Yorker accents - er, if there is such a thing, maybe it's just a classic New York accent. We had dinner at a not bad Italian restaurant near where I was staying on Manhattan.

She's a retired school teacher, living somewhere out on Long Island (or maybe it was the outer edges of Queens, now that I think about it, which is still on Long Island). I told her about all the tourist stuff I was was doing in NY, which she found very interesting, because it's all stuff she hasn't done herself. Which is often the way with natives to a city, you live it in it your whole life but never, say, go up the Empire State Building. Or, as she put it, never go north of 96th street!

I also recommended to her the ferry I went on that trundled around the island.

We had a great time, got on like a house on fire, and I saw her off on the subway at 72nd street and Broadway. I should send her a postcard from my continuing world-wide adventures!

And so I guess technically she's family now, although I have no idea how that works - mother in law once removed perhaps??? Any suggestions?

Saturday was my first full day in New York.

I went for a walk down to Central Park with Vincent and Yasmeen, down past the Dakota Building. We played tag in a play ground, then hide and seek!

Central park is a lot bigger than I expected, complete with several lakes. It has a huge path around it, which was full of cyclists and horses towing carriages. It is also full of children and parents taking advantage of the space - apartments here are tiny.

After a quick bagel, I left Vicent and Yasmeen at the corner of Central Park and 69th Street (I think) and hopped on the subway. I quickly aquired a Metrocard, and after fighting with the turnstyle for a bit - the swipe for the card doesn't work in the direction one might expect - I found myself having to find a platform. I had at least five to chose from! Eventually I found the line I was looking for, and I was on my first subway journey!

I hopped off the train at Times Square, which was about as hideously infested with tourists as I had expected. But I did acquire a map of Manhattan, and located a half price broadway show tickets booth. Which I will return to later to get tickets to see at least one musical - even though I don't like them much :-)

So I hopped on the subway again - I got the hang of it pretty quickly - and headed down to the World Trade Center Site. I still can't get over how big this city is. I went about six stations and I was still in middle of a busy city indeed!

The World Trade Center Site is... Well, now it just looks like a construction site. There's no evidence there of the events of that day, no scars on the surviving buildings. Mind you, it was seven or more years ago now. The only thing I could find was a cross apparently found in the rubble. It was mounted next to a church, just north of the site. It was literally part of the debris, unchanged from how it was found.

Some things of note at the WTC site: at least three different conspiracy theorists ranting away with different conspiracy theories next to the site. Folks selling weird books of photos about September 11th, complete with US flags on the front. And postcard recording before, during and after the collapse of the towers!

After that I wandered down to Wall Street, once I worked out how to get there. The Stock Exchange was closed, it being Saturday. Wall Street is actually quite narrow and mostly closed off from traffic. And indeed the stock exchange is actually around the corner... That end of town is the original city, and hence is a lot less well laid out than the rest of he island - the street layout is positively chaotic in fact. Which makes a nice change from the regular grid over the rest of the island, but also makes finding one's way around difficult.

From Wall Street, it's a short walk down to the waterfront. I found the terminal for the Staton Island Ferry, so I hopped on it! Along with half of France it seemed. About twelve tour buses disgorged a lot of French folks right into the terminal building.

I was very amused to see, wrapped around part of the terminal in big letters, a quote I recognised. A quote I though was very obscure, but apparently not. The line was "We were very tired, we were very merry. We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry" from a poem by Edna St Vicent Millay. Also the creator of the phrase "Burning the candle at both ends." I have a sudden urge to acquire some of her work.

The Staton Island Ferry is most famous for going past the Statue of Liberty. I thought I was being terribly clever by grabbed a seat at the front of the boat... Only to discover it was in fact the back of the boat. These ferries are the type that have two ends, like a tram, so they don't have to turn around, they just reverse direction for the return trip! D'oh!

I took some pictures of the statue, and various other mildly interesting landmarks.

At Staton island, fully 90% of the passengers got straight back on the ferry. Poor Staton island. I see why they call it the Forgotten Borough.

Back on Manhattan, I started walking through Battery Park, when I got a call from my host Amanda. She was in the East Village, and asked me to join them for dinner. So I used a neat Iphone app I downloaded, which told me to get on the subway at a station called Bowling Green, then to hop on to another line heading towards Queens. Which worked a treat - damn, the public transport here is serious and effective. And frequent...

The East Village is a bit like Fitzroy, only about fifty times larger! There was some kind of dance festival going on in a park. We wandered from there to a not bad Italian restaurant, where the presence of three children under four made for a typically chaotic dinner.

Later we started walking north, to catch a subway, past the oldest bar/pub in New York, and through a random Ukrainian festival that was on. This city is a busy one... This was a typical spring weekend apparently...

On the way home, we stopped off at a sculpture called "Alamo", which is cube balanced on one corner... Which is moveable! If you push it hard enough, it actually turns around and a round. So we spun it for a bit...

As we were wandering west, I realised we'd crossed a street called Lafayette. Later that evening I was planning to see a band at a bar there called "Joe's Pub" (a less pub-like place I can't imagine...) So I abandoned my new friends, said good night to Yasmeen, and doubled back to find this gig... Which requires a whole separate entry.....!